The whole of it, in numbers, on a Sunday evening, for about an hour and a half.
He asked good questions. At the end of it he looked at the sheet for a long time, and then he said:
Is that all?
Because the version in his head had been worse. It always is. He had watched me worry at a kitchen table for three years and built a number out of my face, and his number was enormous and it had no end.
I had been protecting him from the truth.
And the truth, it turned out, was the smallest and least frightening thing in our house.
If there is a child in your house who has stopped asking you for things —
do not be proud of them for it. I was, for three years.
Sit them down and show them the real numbers. All of them.
May you like
Because a child who has decided to be the man of the house will find a debt to pay, whether there is one or not.
Mine found his in a drawer. And he paid it, every Saturday, for six months, while I stood on a landing and wondered what he had done wrong.
